Break My Stride
by bisexualcharliedavis
Summary: Rose Anderson learned young how to keep her head high and keep moving forward.


/* _emerges from my tomb to post this fic.* been a while yall. Light Rose/Charlie, s4 au because I don't like how it treats Matthew and Charlie._

Rose Margret Anderson was born on the 15th of June 1933 to parents Harriet and Victor Anderson in Melbourne, Victoria.

For whatever it was worth, Rose has never thought that her parents didn't try. She just wishes that maybe they'd tried a little harder. But as fate would have it, her mother was a local wild child, believing that her parents only cared for her older brother Matthew (knowing her grandparents, Rose is not inclined to disagree with her). Her father is a blow in who struggled to find continuous work.

But they did try, for a couple of years at least. While she was never hungry or left wanting clothes or a bath, she was distinctly aware of the fact that she was alone. Which she never even realized was unusual (or as much as a baby can comprehend of something out of the ordinary) until she was about four. When she is four, she becomes fully aware of the single greatest thing about her otherwise uninteresting family: Uncle Matthew.

Uncle Matthew has just moved to Melbourne for a reason her mind is too small to understand and she thinks he is very good indeed. Unlike her father, who was mostly absent, and her mother, who was very cold, Uncle Matthew made time specifically for her.

And when she was five, Rose wanted nothing more than to go and live with him. He was over every week, for dinner. And after, when he sat in their living room to chat with her father while their mother washed up, he always let Rose sit in his lap. When she'd been a lot younger, and a lot newer, her father would let her do that, but more recently she'd been told that it was time to grow up.

That wish does, shortly after, come true. It came true at a time where her parents were fighting, which wasn't out of the ordinary her parents fought often, and she couldn't sleep. Matthew arrived and helped her pack some things into a grown-up sized suitcase he brought with him. She packed her best dress (For Church, her mother had said, even though they have never gone to Church), her favorite skirt (the yellow one with buttons), her dolls, a note pad she liked to draw in, some socks and other undergarments, and at Uncle Matthew's request, some blouses (personally, she didn't think she needed them. She could just tuck her dress into her skirt. She'd thought that it was rather smart of her to come up with that.)

They leave, and head to Matthew's house, where he sets her bag in his spare room and they listen to the radio until she falls asleep. Personally, she can't think of a better place to be, then right here.

The next three years are ideal. Later, she would learn that the whole thing was unplanned, Matthew was just upset about his niece being treated so poorly by her parents and he wanted to protect her. She also learned that the whole thing was informal and Matthew had no tangible legal claim to her, but her parents don't fight him for custody, however informal. But like many children of the time, a large and threatening storm brewed on the horizon. World War II. Matthew is shipped off to Africa, and her parents regain their grip on her.

Rose was seven when she returned to her parents care. Her uncle had gone off to fight in the new war that was sweeping the world. Her parents have not changed a lot. Her mother regards her coldly. Her father is absent. She takes solace in words. She writes to Matthew as often as she can, picking ever word as carefully as she can to create images out of words.

She can describe the cold, driving rains of his homeland, and the clean blue air of the cold days. Her mother is a slash of red lipstick and a thick dark ocean of hair. Her father is the smell of the bar and pale, clumped eyelashes of a man who sleeps very little. Matthew writes back about rolling sand dunes and burning heat. She's fascinated. So fascinated that she reads as many books about Africa as the library can offer her.

Matthew is gone a long time. At her parents request, she puts down roots and makes friends. She finds school difficult. The teachers admonish her for writing all the time. They use her as a bad example of womanhood. Rose struggles with this even more, because they aren't women. They're barely teenagers. But she smiles and tolerates it, because she doesn't want to get in trouble with her mother. Again.

She first gets her reputation when she is thirteen. She is sitting with her friends by the library, they are all talking about boys they like (Rose doesn't know any of them.) and the movie stars that they want to meet. Gerald Peach and his posse approach them. They are all tall and one has the beginnings of facial hair. She knows him because she beat him in a writing completion earlier in the year and he had called her a whore (Neither of them truly understood the meaning of the word, but Uncle Matthew had explained it to her afterward). She regards him coldly, and looks away. He grabs her by the chin and kisses her. She punches him hard enough to knock one of his teeth loose and grazes her finger in the process.

She is shipped straight back to Matthew who rolls his eyes and tells her he deserved it. Later on, when she is writing again, she is mad that he stole her first kiss from her. Books she has read describe it as beautiful and pure and sweet. It was nothing like that. Rough and sore. He grabbed her chin so hard he almost bruised it. She never asked him why. She doesn't think she even wants to know.

She stays with Matthew for less than a year because he is forced to go to Ballarat on some stupid trumped up nothing. She is mad, but for the sake of her uncle she puts on a nice smile for her parents and promises not to punch any more boys as well as she can. She crosses her fingers behind her back because she knows damn well that she will.

They needn't have worried. Boys avoid her like the plague for the rest of her school years. Something that she sees as a good thing. She can continue her writing. She gets close with a friend of hers named Eliza Jane. She gets a camera for her sixteenth birthday from her uncle Matthew so she learns how to take pictures. Of anything, and everything. Apparently, they're all pretty good. She read a lot of books on how to take good pictures and applies them as well as well as she is able. She likes to take pictures and she spends whatever money she makes from her part-time job serving milkshakes on getting her pictures developed.

As soon as she graduates, she finds work as a secretary.

Over and over again.

Until Gerald Peach offers her a way to get her foot in the door. Perhaps he mistook her for a fool. She didn't like him when she was thirteen, and she certainly does not like him now. Since a fist was seemingly not enough for him, this time, she goes in with a dictionary, and breaks three teeth as well as his nose.

And finds herself shipped off to Matthew who seems more amused then upset. But (like he always did) he pulls her out of the shit by getting her work at The Courier. Apparently, it was a favor someone owed him. She hates Edward Tyneman on sight but for the time being, decides not to rock the boat. She needs a foot hold. Dirt, if you will.

She has been in town less than a day when Matthew is almost ripped from her. She receives a call from the hospital at about lunch time and nearly crashes her car speeding there. Well, she would have. If she owned a car. Actually, Edward gives her a lift. Upon entering the hospital, she is confronted by a young-ish man fighting with a district nurse about his broken ribs. She's directed to wait, and when the doctor is out she will get news.

She meets Lucien Blake for the second time in the room her uncle is sleeping in. He annoys her on site. He leaves, though. After he delivers his prognosis. She doesn't cry one single tear. Of that, she is very proud. Lucien hugs a woman in the hallway that she doesn't know. They seem to know Matthew, but. For whatever reason, they give her alone time with him.

She falls asleep late into the afternoon, worn out from crying, and from being worried. She opens her eyes wearily around six and finds rib-man perched in a chair near the bed. He's wearing pajamas and has an unreadable expression on his face. He introduces himself as Charlie Davis.

Charlie Davis reminds her of a cardboard cut out. Pretty, but otherwise useless. He was friendly, but unable to lend her any new observations, or even help her get her own back against Edward.

His uselessness is highlighted by the fact that he's the reason Matthew's career was over. She doesn't like him just on premise. He seems to return the feeling. And if he cries when he thinks that she is asleep, then she doesn't mention it later.

Matthew doesn't seem to hold anything against him. In fact, he worried for him. He wants to make sure that Charlie is listening to Doctor Blake and not doing anything 'fucking dumb'. He is. He leaves shortly after, to stand in the hallway with his hand over his mouth she figures. She doesn't really care what he does, as long as it's far away from her, and her uncle.

Rose loves words, she always has. She uses them constantly. When Edward steals them, it makes her mad. Not mad enough to punch back (She wants to keep her job) but mad enough to deliver her dirt to him with enough of a smile that he gives her what she wants. Good. It's what she is good at.

She hadn't meant to befriend Charlie. But he was the only one at the station with any kind of rank to really bother with her. He's upgraded from cardboard cut out to odd duck when she realizes that maybe he can help her, after all. Maybe. If she could convince him to like her. He's cold, and it seems to stem from her uncle, somehow. He never talks about it. She never asks.

Matthew recovers from the accident. She pushes his chair and takes him to physical therapy. She lives under his roof. She learns how to cook properly. She tries to tend to his garden, but fails miserably. Matthew invites Charlie over to mow the lawn when Rose can't push down quite hard enough. He cleans out the garden while he's there. She wonders how he can control the flowers but they always seem just out of her reach. She offers him lemonade that is too bitter. He puts a rose that he cut all the thorns off behind her ear.

She punches Edward Tyneman in the face after working for him for a year. She has dirt, yes, but somethings call for fists, and this was one of them. They were running a story about a recent murder in town, and Edward wanted quotes from a young widow who's police husband was just shot. He wants Rose to get them. Rose has spoken to the woman, who still cries sporadically and is really in no state to tell her anything. Edward tells her to go back and implies that the wife was probably a whore, since Charlie has been staying around for her protection. Breaking a nose still feels really good.

She still has a job after that. Patrick forbids Edward from firing her. Possibly because he thought his son needed a good punch in the face. Possibly because her writing was good. Possibly because Matthew threatened to break his teeth. Any combination of the three. He finds the situation amusing more than anything else. So does she.

When she is thirty-five, she starts her own paper, and she hires only women. It's not massively successful, but the stories are good and the people that do buy it like it. It's not the newspaper empire she has hoped for, but she can write whatever she wants when she wants, and frankly, she can't think of anything better.


End file.
